AN: Sorry for the long wait! Hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks to everyone who prodded me along!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 6
"So, we're investigating the two guys you met at the club last night?"
"Raymond Weil and Jon Crane," Noah replied. "I've already checked the state board database and neither of those names came up as registered liquor licensing inspectors. I should have realized that last night. There was something about them that was a little…too smooth."
Elle looked up at Noah. They were walking out of the large Primatech complex towards his company issued car on their way to inspect The Absolute. The meeting with her father had been short and to the point. They were to use the lead they had to track down the agents of Company X and uncover information on the company, using whatever means necessary.
"Company X," as they had taken to calling their mysterious competitor, had made itself known over the years through run-ins between agents. All of the incidents had involved high priority targets or targets who were known to possess Level 5 abilities. Until last night, all of Primatech's agents who had managed to emerge from these skirmishes alive came out with very little useful information and in the last few years, those that were killed had been scalped, their brains removed. They knew of course that this meant Sylar, the elusive serial killer who had given them so much trouble four years ago before dropping off the grid, had become an agent of their enemy organization.
Last night marked the first time that Primatech had solid information on their enemies. Noah had seen their two agents closely and there was a good chance that one of them had been Sylar.
"Wait, those are the aliases they gave?"
"Yes, do you recognize them?" Noah looked at Elle sharply. She rolled her eyes at him.
"Haven't you ever read Batman? Or at least seen Batman Begins?" At his blank stare, Elle elaborated. "You know, that movie with Christian Bale and Cillian Murphy? Mmmhh, those guys are so hot – especially Cillian."
Noah looked at her witheringly. "I hope there's a point to this."
"One of the villains in the movie is Jonathan Crane. He's known as the Scarecrow. He uses drugs to induce fear in people."
"Don't you get enough excitement out of fighting real life villains without having to read about them in comics?"
"You know, you could learn a lot from comics if you gave them a chance. You might even start to like them," Elle said teasingly.
He turned his disdainful eyes on her. "Highly unlikely."
Elle shrugged. "Anyhoo, I doubt it's a random alias. It might be a clue into his ability. Maybe he induces fear in people? You said that there was crazy stampeding going on last night. Sounds like some unnatural fear to me."
Noah didn't think running from a burning building was a sign of "unnaturally" fearful behavior but decided to let it go. That aside, it was still a valid theory.
"And what about the other name? Does that come from Batman, too?"
"That one…that one sounds familiar but I can't remember where I've heard it. I'll look it up later when we get back," she said, climbing into the passenger seat of his car. They buckled up and Elle stared out the window thoughtfully as the buildings and streets flew past.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Care to explain why I had to hear about yesterday's outing from Knox, last night?"
From his seat in the large armchair in front of Arthur's desk, Gabriel watched his father carefully from under lowered lids as Arthur stared out through the large floor length windows behind his desk, his back to Gabriel. Gabriel's legs were casually stretched out in front of him as he picked some non-existent lint from his carefully pressed black slacks, every inch of him exuding a nonchalance that he wore like a cloak to conceal the tension he felt at Arthur's question.
He gave a bored shrug. "With the target acquired, there was nothing pressing to report on. And it was late. You know I don't like to work late shifts." From his seated position, he could see the reflection of Arthur's face in the glass. He met Arthur's reflected gaze openly, carefully blanking his mind to anything except his recollection of the cleanup reports he had read that morning. For some reason he couldn't explain, he didn't want to tell Arthur about the petite blonde woman he had seen last night. He knew of course that it hadn't been Elle but all the same, it felt best to keep that detail to himself.
"Yes. Of course. You have a beautiful wife to get home to," Arthur nodded understandingly. "I remember what that's like." Gabriel ignored the subtle allusion to his mother. He knew better than to take Arthur's bait and ask about her.
"How is she by the way?" Arthur continued when Gabriel remained silent. "How is that beautiful wife of yours?" Gabriel held his body still, resisting the urge to shift in his seat as he thought of a suitably pleasant yet vague answer.
"She's good. Working more than ever but with the assignments that I've been getting lately, that's a good thing."
"I know we've been giving you a lot more to deal with in the last few months but I need you right now, son." Arthur turned to face him, his lined face serious as ever. "Things are coming to a head with the Company. We've been running into them much more frequently in the last year and I have a…feeling that a direct confrontation is unavoidable."
Ah, so that was it.
"Dad, you know I'll do everything I can to help you. I've never failed a mission yet."
"I know you will, Gabriel. You've always been loyal. I just wanted to make sure…that things are going well for you. I can't have you distracted right now."
"Of course. I'll do whatever you need me to."
"I know you will, Gabriel." Arthur smiled and nodded at him before turning to look out the window again. Gabriel took that as his cue to leave and smoothly straightened up from his seat at the table.
He had crossed the room and had the door halfway open before Arthur spoke again.
"Oh, one last thing, Gabriel. Knox told me that there was a young lady with Phil last night." Gabriel stiffened. "The word from the cleanup crew was that she short circuited all the equipment in the room with an electrical outburst. Unless there's another Special with electrokinesis we've failed to document, it would seem that you almost had a run in with that agent you've been chasing. What was the name again?" At Arthur's words, a wave of unease crept through him. He turned his head slightly to answer.
"Agent Bishop."
"That's right…Bishop. Who would have guessed that Bishop was a woman? It's too bad you and Knox weren't able to see her face. In any case," Arthur continued in a dismissive tone. "I'm sure you'll track her down eventually."
Gabriel's hand tightened on the doorknob before he gave a curt nod, exiting and closing the door behind him firmly.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Look at this, Bennet," Elle called over her shoulder. Noah came to stand behind her as she carefully scanned the twisted metal doorknob with her Kelvin probe for fingerprints. The metal of the knob was deeply indented with the shape of a large hand.
"Enhanced strength. Good work, Elle."
Her face brightened. "Thanks."
They had started their inspection in the alley where Phil had landed in and moved on to the room he had taken her to. From there, they traced a surprisingly easy to follow path of destruction all the way down to the first floor. There were mangled doors and dented and gouged walls that appeared to be the work of telekinesis, lending support to Bennet's belief that Sylar had been in attendance the night before. This was their first indication of the presence of another ability being used.
"This is our second guy. Sylar wouldn't use super strength like this even if he had it when his telekinesis is his best option. That means Jon Crane has enhanced strength."
"How do you know that Jon Crane has super strength and not the other guy?"
"Sylar wouldn't take a backseat to anyone. He was in charge last night. Crane was his subordinate."
"So I guess we can dump the alias theory."
"Not necessarily. It still might be a clue into his power or something else about him."
"So are we done here, then?"
Elle turned around to face him when he didn't respond. The look on his face was serious as always but underneath, Elle saw the uneasy hesitation.
"What's wrong?"
"I checked the security room while you were in here. There's nothing useful salvageable but, our guys were there last night. We need to assume that they've seen you." Elle sucked in a breath. "We need to go back now, Elle. You find out what you can about Raymond Weil. I'm going to visit someone in the city who can make a sketch of these guys for us."
"You're going to see Isaac?"
"Yes." Her face brightened. "And no, you can't come. I don't need you riffling through his things like you did last time."
Elle's lower lip popped out in a pout. "Meanie."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Of all the times for this to happen, why now?
Sylar angrily shot an ice blast at the fleeing form of test subject No. 11, freezing him the middle of his sprint. His previous momentum didn't slow and his frozen form promptly tumbled down, shattering against the floor. Sylar turned to look at the hallway behind him. There was pandemonium. Pinehearst employees were running everywhere amidst flickering lights and there was paperwork and debris littering the normally clinically clean seventh floor.
Mohinder's test subjects on the tenth floor had escaped.
One of them had managed to inject Mohinder with one of his own syringes and then promptly freed the others. They were crawling all over the building now in an attempt to leave. Most of Pinehearst's Specials were out on assignment so it was up to Sylar and a handful of others to reign them all in. Some of the escapees had powers ranging from negligible to extremely dangerous but the experiments had yet to yield a single result that didn't include negative side effects. Now, he was stuck hunting down thirteen subjects in different stages of mutation before they reached the parts of the building that weren't used by Specials. Or worse, before they managed to make it onto the street.
Normally, Sylar enjoyed a good game of cat and mouse but he was busy at the moment. And these mice were useless to him. He couldn't even take their powers. After all, who wanted to mess with damaged, mutant DNA? He sighed and turned down another corridor, away from the specially controlled file room he had been in, file folders tightly clutched in hand. He had been in the middle of reaserch. Arthur's words had unsettled him more than he cared to admit and he had gone down to look for information on Agent Bishop again as well as his own personnel file, going over the content that he knew would include the background check that Elle had been subjected to before their marriage.
He grabbed the arm of an agent who was running by, startling the man. Even at Pinehearst amongst other Specials, he was regarded warily.
"I want the stairway blocked off. Make sure no one gets by."
"Yes, sir." The agent nodded, radioing in more help as he hurried away.
Sylar had already shut the elevators down. With no easy exits available, it was a matter of simply flushing them out. He had already killed five of them and had another telekinetically pinned when he got a call from Mohinder. He flipped open his cell with one hand while keeping the struggling subject in place with the other.
"Sylar," Mohinder angrily ground out without preamble, "you need to stop killing my subjects! Some of them could still prove to be useful to my research. I need you to return them to the lab. Alive."
"Are you sure you'll be able to keep them under control, doctor? I'd hate for them to kill you on the way out next time," Sylar drawled, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Just do it."
Sylar bristled at the command in his voice. As if he took orders from Mohinder! The man was useless. He'd been working on experiments for his father since before Sylar got to Pinehearst and as far as he'd heard, had yet to head a single successful project. And even Sylar, removed as he was from the regular rumor mill (apart from being a regular subject of them), had heard that the only reason Mohinder was at Pinehearst was because of some diabolical piece of blackmail that Arthur was holding over him.
Sylar eyed the panicked test subject with a sneer on his face. With a jerk of his arm, he threw the screaming man across the elegant office space, breaking his body on the opposite wall. He crumbled to the floor, barely alive. He could hear Mohinder angrily asking him what the hell was going on. He smirked and turned to leave.
"Oh, no," Sylar answered in a voice full of feigned regret. "My fingers slipped. But don't worry, Mo. If you send down one of your techies to Harrison's office quick enough, you might be able to salvage this one." He turned off the phone amidst Mohinder's screams of outrage.
He clicked the phone back on and dialed Specialist Roberts. Roberts answered with a sharp yes.
"How many test subjects are left?"
"We've found five others. But there's a problem, sir."
"What now?"
"One of them slipped past the agents on the forth landing…we think he made it outside."
Sylar suppressed a groan, turning his steps towards the stairs. "Find the last subject. I'll take care of the escapee."
"Yes, sir."
"Which one was it?"
"…it was No. 13, sir."
Sylar clenched his teeth, his mind racing. Of all the subjects for them to lose!
"I'm sorry, sir. We think we may know where he would head –"
"I already know where he's going."
Now he just needed to get there before he did.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: A scanning Kelvin probe (SKP) is used to pick up fingerprints without having to touch them, leaving the fingerprint residue intact to use for other testing. It can produce a high resolution image of the print. It's new technology that isn't used yet but I figured that The Company would have the latest and greatest.